Background
The Social Credit System (Chinese: 社会信用体系; pinyin: shèhuì xìnyòng tǐxì) is a national blacklist being developed by the government of the People's Republic of China under General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping's administration. The program initiated regional trials in 2009, before launching a national pilot with eight credit scoring firms in 2014. It was first introduced formally by then Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, on October 20, 2011, during one of the State Council Meetings. In 2018, these efforts were centralized under the People's Bank of China with participation from the eight firms. The social credit initiative calls for the establishments of unified record system for businesses, individuals and government institutions to be tracked and evaluated for trustworthiness. Initial reports suggested that the system utilized numerical score as the reward and punishment mechanism;[ recent reports suggest there are in fact multiple, different forms of the social credit system being experimented with. Numerical system has been implemented only in several regional pilot programs, while the nationwide regulatory method has been based primarily on blacklisting and whitelisting. The credit system is closely related to China's mass surveillance systems such as Skynet, which incorporates facial recognition system, big data analysis technology, and AI (Source: Wikipedia).
Overall, The Social Credit System is an extension to the existing financial credit rating system in China. The origin of SCS can be traced back to the 1980s, when the Chinese government attempted to develop a personal banking and financial credit rating system, especially for rural individuals and small businesses that lack documented records. The Chinese government aims to enhance trust in the society with the system and regulate businesses regarding issues such as food safety, intellectual property theft, and financial fraud. Supporters of the Credit System claim that the system helps to regulate social behavior, improve the "trustworthiness" which includes paying taxes and bills on time and promote traditional moral values, while critics of the system claim that it oversteps the rule of law and infringes the legal rights of residents and organizations, especially the right to reputation, the right to privacy as well as personal dignity, and that the system may be a tool for comprehensive government surveillance and for suppression of dissent from the Communist Party of China. Read more...
The complicated truth about China's social credit system
China's social credit system isn't a world first but when it's complete it will be unique. The system isn't just as simple as everyone being given a score though. China's social credit system has been compared to Black Mirror, Big Brother and every other dystopian future sci-fi writers can think up. The reality is more complicated — and in some ways, worse. The idea for social credit came about back in 2007, with projects announced by the government as an opt-in system in 2014. But there's a difference between the official government system and private, corporate versions, though the latter's scoring system that includes shopping habits and friendships is often conflated with the former. Brits are well accustomed to credit checks: data brokers such as Experian trace the timely manner in which we pay our debts, giving us a score that's used by lenders and mortgage providers. We also have social-style scores, and anyone who has shopped online with eBay has a rating on shipping times and communication, while Uber drivers and passengers both rate each other; if your score falls too far, you're out of luck. China's social credit system expands that idea to all aspects of life, judging citizens' behaviour and trustworthiness. Caught jaywalking, don't pay a court bill, play your music too loud on the train — you could lose certain rights, such as booking a flight or train ticket. "The idea itself is not a Chinese phenomenon," says Mareike Ohlberg, research associate at the Mercator Institute for China Studies. Nor is the use, and abuse, of aggregated data for analysis of behaviour. "But if [the Chinese system] does come together as envisioned, it would still be something very unique," she says. "It's both unique and part of a global trend." Read more...
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